mélange à moi

letter to the editor

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:43:00 +0000

in response to the commercial appeal's solicitation for letters on the county's proposed non-discrimination ordinance (which would prevent the county & its contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ folks in employment and services):

Of course the Shelby County Commission should pass the Non-Discrimination Ordinance. Although sexual orientation and gender identity are not federally protected categories (yet), virtually every other American metropolitan area of Memphis' size has enacted similar municipal ordinances. Some might argue that sexual orientation and gender identity should not be protected because these are matters of "personal choice;" although I would dispute that claim, I'll remind those who buy into that argument that other matters of "choice," like religion and family status, have been protected by similar statutes for years. Hiring, retention, promotion, and access to county services should be determined by relevant factors. One's sexual orientation or gender identity could never count among these factors.

send your letter, along with your full name, address, and daytime & evening phone numbers, to hotbutton@commercialappeal.com by may 13. they've asked us to limit our responses to 4-5 lines.

finally, someone made sense of "opposite marriage!"

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:17:00 +0000

i'm like, at least a week late to the perez hilton/miss california debacle, but i'll make up for my tardiness with this awesome video (via douglitas). promise!

como hacer un bebe

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:52:00 +0000

a spanish couple made this charming little video!

"time is what turns kittens into cats"

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:09:00 +0000

salinger, my alpha and omega (cat), turns 8 today.

i grew up in a house with dogs; sal was my first cat. i got him just after i moved out at age 18, at least in part as a rebellion against my parents' preference for canines. my family was skeptical of him on the basis of species at first, but he won them over to such an extent that my sister and parents are now exclusively cat owners! sal's been with me through thick and thin; he's lived everywhere that i've lived in my adult life, with all the roommates, family members, and other animals. he's known by many as a fickle and whiny creature with an insatiable appetite for wet food, but he's known by me as the only cat i've had who will let me take him under my arm like a teddy bear for an afternoon nap.

apparently, 8 in cat years is 48 in human years, at least according to this informative chart. kinda weird that cat years aren't evenly distributed among human years. also, it's kinda weird that my other cat, mapache, will soon be the equivalent of 32 in human years in spite of the fact that she has the personality of a human four-year-old. it's totally believable that sal's nearly twice my age: even as a kitten, he had an "old soul." heh, a crotchety old soul.

happy birthday, sweet boy! um, 'cos i know you read my blog...

butter bean & greens soup

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:20:00 +0000

another sinus infection and another bout of chilly weather (well, it was chilly) has me thinking about soup. here's a recipe for a very hearty vegetarian soup my friend and fellow philosopher, cigdem, invented a few weeks ago. i'm going to make my own batch today.

1. in a large pot, boil salted water with red potatoes and carrots until both are mostly cooked
2. in a separate pan, sauté 1/2 to 1 white onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil
3. once onions start to become transparent, add greens (kale/collard/mustard/etc.) and sauté until wilted
4. if there's a lot of excess water in the potatoes/carrots mixture, drain a little off. the remaining water will become the base of the broth.
5. add the sauteed mixture to the potatoes/carrots.
6. add other vegetables of your choice to the pot (snap peas, can of tomatoes, zucchini, etc.). continue to gently boil on medium heat until these veggies are cooked.
7. add a 1-2 cans of butter beans and 1/2-1 cup of lemon or grapefruit juice. leave mixture on medium heat for an additional 4-5 minutes.

voilà! a hearty vegetarian soup that will allow you to put all of those fresh veggies in your fridge to use before you leave town for a long weekend!

never check your email again!

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:41:00 +0000

the miracle of google analytics: it's no longer necessary to check your gmail account because google can do it better than you can, anyway! they've just launched google autopilot, a service that will reply to all future email automatically based on its assessment of your email history.

now, if only google could write my nietzsche presentation before seminar this afternoon....

igoogle thememaker

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:39:00 +0000

finally, google has developed a (fairly) easy-to-use utility for creating your own igoogle themes! no xml required.

igoogle thememaker

a few tips for those of you considering making your own themes:

1. create an image that is 1200 x 175 pixels. do NOT bother with the crappy image editing interface that google provides.
2. do not include ANY spaces in your theme name, creator name, or description. although they don't tell you this, the thememaker will reject your theme if you have any spaces!
3. only check the box that appears with the EULA if you want to make your theme available to all of google's users!

here's a screenshot of my first attempt:

cute, huh?

twilight of my idol

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:45:00 +0000

i never blog about grad school. it's a little strange, since my graduate work is such a huge part of my life, but i've chalked it up to wanting to blog as a means of blowing off steam on other questions.

currently reading:
hegel, lectures on the philosophy of religion, volumes I-III
foucault, the order of things

hegel is totally owning foucault in the battle for my interest. i'm seeing the dialectic everywhere these days! foucault would probably think that's a hegemonic load of crap, but his system is totalizing, too; at least hegel admits it! foucault's already dissed two of my favorite branches of philosophy in this book: humanism and phenomenology. he's also offered a blistering critique of biology, but our views are similar there. but today's reading totally crossed the line. he said that marx and ricardo share the same conditions for knowledge underlying their thought, and on this basis, he said that there isn't an important difference in their views on political economy. sure, there's no difference: for the abstractions of the bourgeois academic! getting mad about this (finally?) made me call into question the entire archaeological project. foucault's method is to divine some kind of structure out of seemingly random bits of information that he finds in the french archives. the structures he fabricates allow him to make all kinds of claims about fields as diverse as punishment, psychiatry, sexuality, philology, political economy, medicine, and biology. you don't need hegel to diagnose this as abstract thought in one of its most extreme incarnations (although being immersed in hegel does facilitate this diagnosis).

i'm not sure where this leaves me with respect to foucault. his thought on medicine and biology (and the thought of his predecessors, bachelard and canguilhem) is so central to my own thinking on these issues that i'm not sure i can discard it. this is also true to varying degrees of his work on punishment, power, and sexuality. however, i've realized that i cannot accept the foucaultdian line on every issue. perhaps if i hadn't spent so much time working on fanon and the late sartre last semester i would be more alienated from my reasons for doing philosophy. perhaps if i weren't simultaneously reading hegel. but as it stands now, i have a clear idea of the work that i expect philosophy to do in this world, and an expectation that my philosophies (and philosophers!) will be informed by something more worldly than an archive. like experience, or practice. and my philosophical and practical commitment to other human beings on the basis of our shared humanity is something i'm not going to excise. ever.

sometimes i wonder if i'm just not getting it. and then i recall that foucault put all of his future-of-philosophy chips in with deleuze at the end of his (foucault's) life. if that's our future, i will gratefully be left behind.

dear memphis tigers,

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:21:00 +0000

this is what you make me feel like inside:

please don't ruin my first and only sports obsession by playing tomorrow's game against maryland as pathetically as you did yesterday's game v. cal state northridge.

kisses,
amycita

AIDS = Abstinence-only Is a Deadly Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:02:00 +0000

some very disturbing news was released yesterday about washington, d.c.: the rate of HIV/AIDS infection is 1 per 33 adults ages 13+, or 3% of the adult population. this is a higher rate of infection than in some west african countries (although the actual number of infected people is higher in these countries). even worse, over half of the adults who participated in the survey admitted that they did not know the HIV status of their last sexual partner. and the worst and most staggering statistic of the survey: 70% of adults surveyed did not use a condom during their most recent sexual encounter! this seems like an indictment of the failure of the more than $1 billion that the federal government has spent on abstinence-only education since title v was passed in 1996.

the survey on d.c. infeciton rates was released just as pope benedict released his first statement on the HIV/AIDS crisis in africa, in which he alleges that condoms actually contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS. not only is this a blatant lie, but it's an example of the worst kind of irresponsibility toward the reported 143 million catholics living in africa, who are already bombarded by all kinds of irresponsible misinformation about HIV/AIDS.

we've known what causes HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it from being transmitted for over two decades now, but these reports show us that this is hardly the time to be complacent on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. it's still an epidemic, and it's still killing people in the united states and abroad. it's time to face the facts: abstinence-only education is a form of denial, and denial isn't a humane strategy for addressing a human crisis.

"America when will you send your eggs to India?"

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:13:00 +0000

remember the world food crisis?

this time last year, buried among the wall-to-wall coverage of reverend jeremiah wright's every syllable, the world bank and others were warning of the worst food shortage since 1982. in march 2008, they identified 33 countries that were at risk of "civil unrest" due to hunger. some countries had already experienced unrest.

i've been thinking a lot about world poverty through the lens of american media and culture lately. i followed some of the debates around the release of slumdog millionaire, a movie that captured the hearts of many american liberals as a multicultural masterpiece that used "real" children from the slums (are these the "slumdogs"?!) and featured "real" accounts of poverty in india. [N.B. india was the perfect site for this fantasy, in my view, because it's (1) the "democratic success story" of that region; (2) a strong political ally of the U.S. and U.K.; (3) a recent ex-colony of britain, where english language and customs are more pervasive than in most other countries.] the accounts of the children who were used (and i do mean used) in this movie returning to their homes in the slums are crushing: after the oscars, the children resumed their lives in tin roof shanties and refused to take off their formal dresses and tuxedos from the oscars for days. people who live in the slums of mumbai had a harsh critique of the movie's offensive title and for it's ludicrous plot (a boy from the slums hits it rich on a tv game show). real poverty doesn't end in 2 hours or in the final moments of a game show. real hunger can't be sated by outlandish fantasies.

the bank/market crash in the U.S. and our persistent desire to see the fulfillment of the "american dream" in places where all dreams are nightmares (including many places in the U.S.) have permitted the spectre of the world food crisis to all but evaporate from the american (media) consciousness. which is why i was so surprised--and disturbed--to discover this article in today's new york times on malnourishment and hunger among children in india.

as i read today's article, i remembered the hastily abandoned "storyline" of the world food crisis and i thought of allen ginsberg's poem, "America," which includes the line: "America when will you send your eggs to India?" but sending our eggs--or any amount of humanitarian relief--to india or elsewhere will not be enough. as we watch the food crisis and the economic crisis unfold around us, we should reflect on the root causes. it's not simply greed, or some other emotional or psychological state. we live in a world where commodoties have more value than human lives (and i'm not just talking about some vague economic value--i mean that we value things more than people, in a moral sense, in our "deeds" if not in our "words.") we should demand a world where the need for humanitarian relief is not a permanent condition for anyone. we have a responsibilty--as americans, as citizens of the so-called "first world," as human beings--to radically change a world that forces anyone to live as these children do. which reminds me of another favorite quote of mine: "Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind." (jean-paul sartre, "existentialism and human emotions")

Nephew!

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:05:00 +0000

jennifer became an aunt today! the baby's name is hunter cole (he goes by cole) and he was 6 lbs., 14 oz. mom, baby, and anxious aunt are all resting comfortably.

welcome, baby cole, and congrats to jennifer & her family on their newest, cutest arrival!

IRL

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:31:00 +0000

someone i don't know in real life (IRL) added me on twitter today. i have mixed feelings about following people i don't know on twitter. i guess i'm too tied to the old model of social networking, where you have some kind of relationship with the person on the other end apart from a virtual presence. or at least you have a more developed virtual relationship than reading each other's tweets. on the other hand, i feel like i'm not maximizing twitter's usefulness if i'm reading updates by the same people whose myspace and facebook profiles i'm already reading.

is this the beginning of social networking technology leaving me in the dust? am i getting old? and does anyone else out there think of himself or herself as "old" mostly in terms of whether or not s/he i s on the technological cutting edge? in other words, is my relative age IRL a measure of my savvy in my virtual life?

am i stuck in the tin-can-and-string
social networking era?

"There is nothing love cannot face"

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:27:00 +0000

i was excited to learn this morning that some married, same-sex couples in MA are filing suit against the federal government to overturn DOMA (the notorious defense of marriage act, passed under clinton). but my excitement is tempered--as always--by the failure of the movement to challenge injustice at its root.

it turns out that the pending suit wouldn't overturn DOMA in its entirety, a measure that even president obama (who is against same-sex marriage, pro civil union) supports. rather, the suit narrowly challenges one provision of DOMA: the fact that the federal government does not have to recognize same-sex marriages deemed legal by various states. what this means is that if the lawsuit is successful, same-sex couples in MA and CT (the only states where same-sex marriage is legal) will have access to the federal rights of marriage under the equal protection clause. couples in states like NY--which recognized same-sex marriages from other states, but doesn't allow them to be performed in-state--would presumably get the same benefits as those in MA and CT. but same-sex couples in states where same-sex marriage is not legal will still face discrimination at the local, state, and federal level. in other words, this challenge does nothing for those of us who are the worst off in the struggle for marriage equality.

i understand that there are tactical reasons to prefer dismantling DOMA one step at a time. my best friend and his boyfriend stand to benefit tremendously from the current suit, assuming it's successful, and there are good reasons to think that it will be successful. but when the marriage equality movement addresses inequity at the federal level, as this suit proposes to do, i think there is a moral and political imperative to be sure that the benefits will accrue to all couples, not just those who are privileged enough to live in places where they're already doing a little bit better than the rest of us. anyway, if we really believe that there's nothing our love cannot face--and i believe this--and we believe that injustice must always be faced, must always be challenged, and can never be allowed to stand unopposed, then i think we should stop sacrificing principles for tactics whenever the opportunity arises. DOMA should be opposed in toto.

[of course, if the suit succeeds, even with its limited goal, i hope my best friend and his bf will be the first in line for federal recognition.]

ugh, i'm already tired of thinking about same-sex marriage again. instead of rambling on about the hypocrisy of those inside and outside the movement, i'll direct you to this article i wrote for news & letters (for more of my perspective on the marriage equality movement) and this photo:

of del martin & phylis lyon on their wedding day. they became a couple in 1952; they wed several times (legally and illegally) before del died in 2008. oh, and this:

“Love is patient; love is kind
and envies no one.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
never selfish, not quick to take offense.
There is nothing love cannot face;
there is no limit to its faith,
its hope, and endurance.
In a word, there are three things
that last forever: faith, hope, and love;
but the greatest of them all is love.”

perhaps unexpectedly, the love of same-sex couples may exemplify this verse best of all.

addicted

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:25:00 +0000

"it could never happen to someone like me."

"i'm in control; i can decide to quit whenever i want!"

"i'm under a lot of stress right now. i just need a little relaxation."

"i don't even like sci-fi and supernatural fantasies!"

i've seen the addictive power of buffy the vampire slayer in other people's lives and i've always thought i was immune. i'll admit it: i've gently ridiculed the legions of buffy fanatics in my life with others for whom buffy held no sway. "it's a show about a valley girl who kicks demon ass," we'd sneer. the mere premise was enough to send our eyes rolling. my attitude softened a bit as i've met more buffy lovers whose opinions i respect on other matters (terry & fra). i even tried to get the buffy bug when i started spending a lot of time with jennifer (i still won't admit that this was a ploy to make her fall for me, but you can draw your own conclusions). after a few false starts, i was resigned to a life of considering buffy tolerable, but not too captivating. and then everything changed.

a few weeks ago, jennifer asked me if i'd watch an episode from the 4th (and douglas says, worst) season with her. i agreed, in the spirit of cheerfully undertaking my girlfriend-ly duties. little did i know that this moment would radically alter the rest of my life. or at least the rest of my month.

i don't remember which episode it was, but it was definitely more of the same stuff i'd seen during previous dalliances with buffy. cheesy fight scenes, corny humor, ridiculous (albeit in a self-aware way, which is a critical component) plot lines involving melodramatic teenagers combating evil demons. stereotypes galore: the doting mom, the goofy male friend, the nerdy lesbian witch, the awkward british man, and even the spunky little gal who packs a "surprisingly" strong punch. i've seen 'em all before. yet for some reason, this time was different. we watched one episode and i wanted to watch another. after that, another! as the chasm between the storyline and and reality grew, so did my appetite for more! within a weekend, i was transformed from slayer naysayer to buffy buff! i couldn't get enough of the stuff!

thus i found myself at my desk this morning, scouring the internet for buffy recaps and arcana, dreaming of tonight, when jennifer and i will likely return to our favorite little city on the hellmouth. yes, i said "hellmouth" without even flinching. i know what that means (i think), and i know all about the "big bad" and the watchers and all of the other absurd details. hello. my name is amy, and i'm a buffy fanatic. in spite of my rationalizations (see above), in my more lucid moments i realize that i am now addicted to something i couldn't have imagined really liking a few weeks ago. inexplicably addicted. the strangest part of this severe and sudden reversal is that i can't identify what it is that has drawn me so deeply into the cult of buffy in the first place.

well, i guess i have an idea. let's just say i suspect it has less to do with this:

and more to do with this:

hey, i'm a lover, not a fighter. at least that hasn't changed.

music scores in the public domain: online at last!

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:08:00 +0000

i've been hoping something like this would come along since 1995! the international music score library is a wiki with free, downloadable pdfs of complete classical music scores! i wish i had my cello in memphis so that i could go crazy on some bach suites tonight!!!

why we quit

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:46:00 +0000

because sometimes i need a reminder in black & white.

source: american lung association

by special request

noreply@blogger.com (amycita) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:43:00 +0000

i am amy. there are an infinite number of additional predicates i could plug into that sentence, but let's leave it there for now.

the name of my blog means "mixture of me." yes, it's a play on a disreputable french phrase, but i promise that this will be an upstanding blog.

one more note on this blog: it's a capitulation to my lovely girlfriend, jennifer, and my lovely-in-his-own-right best friend, douglas, who've both been asking me to get my own blog up & running for a long time. there's another best friend named douglas in the mix, but i refuse to link to his blog until it has form and content.